Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has addressed the recent performance issues of Charles Leclerc, urging against drawing “generic conclusions” about the driver’s form. This comes after Leclerc’s string of disappointing results following his victory at the Monaco Grand Prix in May.
Leclerc’s win in Monaco was a significant emotional triumph, but since then, he has only managed a fifth-place finish in Spain. He failed to score points in the subsequent four races, with retirements in Canada and finishes outside the points in Austria and Great Britain.
Vasseur emphasized the importance of avoiding broad judgments based on these recent performances. Ferrari and Leclerc have reportedly held extensive discussions to analyze and address the challenges they have faced since the Monaco Grand Prix.
“First, we have to avoid to draw a generic conclusion on what’s happened – we need to have a deep look on everything,” Vasseur told members of the press at the Silverstone circuit, adding that “I think the car the last two races was at least not easy to drive, and it was asking a lot to the drivers, mainly for (Saturday), that Charles had the new package on Friday, he has to jump into the car and do the FP3 with the wet and he had to go in quali with a car that he didn’t drive before.
“And he was in very good shape until Turn 13, and otherwise, we spoke together about this yesterday, but he was faster than Russell until Turn 13 [in Q2].
“But for sure, I think that we are really at the limit of the car, and the car was not easy to drive in these conditions, but we are doing more mistakes.
“And it’s true that as soon as you have a kind of bad momentum, let’s call it like this, that you have the feeling that you have to compensate – and this is a mistake from the team, from the drivers, from everybody – because you can’t compensate.
“Basically, you have to be at the limit. It means that if something is going a bit less good, you can’t do more than what you were doing before and I think it’s why a part of the reason of the call today on the strategy is that, starting P11, that he had a very good start but he came back behind Stroll, he lost 10 seconds behind Stroll and at one stage when you are 15 seconds off Carlos or Verstappen, you know that if you don’t do something mega you won’t come back and it’s probably part of the issue.
“But I had a long discussion with Charles, we agreed on this, and we’ll come back to the to the reasons,” the Ferrari boss concluded.